Read three volumes of the works of Clement,[586] presbyter of
Alexandria, entitled _Outlines_, _The Miscellanies_, _The Tutor_.
The _Outlines_ contain a brief explanation and interpretation of
certain passages in the Old and New Testaments. Although in some
cases what he says appears orthodox, in others he indulges in impious
and legendary fables. For he is of opinion that matter is eternal
and that ideas are introduced by certain fixed conditions; he also
reduces the Son to something created. He talks prodigious nonsense
about the transmigration of souls and the existence of a number of
worlds before Adam. He endeavours to show that Eve came from Adam,
not as Holy Scripture tells us, but in an impious and shameful
manner; he idly imagines that angels have connexion with women and
beget children; that the Word was not incarnate, but only appeared
so. He is further convicted of monstrous statements about two Words
of the Father, the lesser of which appeared to mortals, or rather
not even that one, for he writes: “The Son is called the Word, of
the same name as the Word of the Father, but this is not the Word
that became flesh, nor even the Word of the Father, but a certain
power of God, as it were an efflux from the Word itself, having
become mind, pervaded the hearts of men.” All this he attempts to
support by passages of Scripture. He talks much other blasphemous
nonsense, either he or some one else under his name. These monstrous
blasphemies are contained in eight books, in which he frequently
discusses the same points and quotes passages from Scripture
promiscuously and confusedly, like one possessed. The entire work
includes notes on Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, St. Paul’s epistles,
the Catholic epistles, and Ecclesiasticus. Clement was a pupil of
Pantaenus, as he himself says. Let this suffice for the _Outlines_.